Bones and Dust
by twinparadox
Summary: How does it feel to be constantly out of place? What's it like to always be out of step? This is a story about a girl, regarded by everyone as a loser, how does she turn things around? Will life truly pick up?
1. Default Chapter

Chapter One

Dear Diary,

I fear I shall explode if I keep my silence a minute longer—_I have been so wronged_—but since this is the first time I am writing in here, I suppose I shall have to begin with preliminaries of some sort. Alright, I shall write a very brief introduction of myself for now as I am currently experiencing a desperate need to write down what has just happened. Okay, if I do not remember incorrectly, I was born on the twentieth of October, and migrated from India (my home state should be in the South, the details are all rather foggy, so I don't know where I came from, in actual fact) when I was six. My dad works in some blue collar industry (the last time I wrote to him, he mentioned being a waiter somewhere), so I have never felt a real sense of belonging in school (that'll be Hogwarts, everyone there I've met is so _rich_ and they're not shy about it). It's not just the money though, I've heard something about the Weasel (or Weasley family, maybe I'm wrong) family, they're also poor, but that's not _the _thing, I feel so different because, one, I come from India (exotic and oriental to my schoolmates), two, I can't speak English very well (actually, I'm on the extremely mediocre side) and all and sundry treat me like I'm stupid or something and, three, I just _don't _understand them (but more on that later, for now, I conclude my life story).

I'll take a deep breath, close my eyes, calm…calm…calm, I tend to get incomprehensible when I'm excited (one of the million reasons why I'm angry now). Now I open my eyes, I'm better now, but not any less angry. It all started today, last day of school before the summer, you see, I was just walking around before the Great Feast (school custom—more later) when I decided to pay the library a visit, I ran into this boy there. Literally. So I just felt guilty since he was this fat little fellow at least a head shorter than me though we're the same age (I distinctly knew him from the Charms classes we had together) and I helped him up. I wanted to just end it there and then—just get rid of him—but the guy obviously thought I liked him or something because I just picked him (and then his frog—further testament to why I felt sorry for him) off the floor where he was sprawled out like he was dying, so he started talking to me. He practically told me his whole life story, including the speech the lifeguard gave him (he told it to me word for word) when his Great-Uncle-Something-Or-Other dropped him into Blackpool Pier and he nearly drowned (I felt sorry for him again when he told me that—how boring must his life be if he thinks being dropped into a Pier is memorable?). All this continued right till the time we walked into the Great Hall with our arms linked Southern Gal style (his idea—not mine), he was just blithely blabbering on about how he'd never had a best friend before and _Oh! What absolutely fantabulous wiggly-wingly-waggly-wangly-wonderful chummy-chums we were going to be _and how it would never have happened if he had never forgotten to return a spell book until that very day. I, on the other hand, was try sooooooo desperately to just _lose _him in the crowd but the more I loosed my arm and wriggled in a bid to get free, the tighter he held on, and he even had the gall to tell me "Oh, don't worry about getting lost out here, I'll take care of you, I'm holding you really tight, you won't lose me, not to worry." And then there I was just barely resisting the curiously strong urge to grab my wand and curse his head off his two fat shoulders (no big loss). Then, suddenly, I realized that he was a Gryffindor and I was a Ravenclaw (House system—details later), so we couldn't possibly sit together, so I put on my widest smile and ever sooo politely pointed out that fact to him. Unfortunately, he just said "Not to worry, we can all sit together, the teachers won't mind." And so, steered me to his table to a seat right next to his and I felt like screaming "BUT _I _DO, YOU BLITHERING _IDIOT!!!!!!_"—how I wish I had, because that's when all the trouble started.

When the Feast commenced, all the students were in the Great Hall--and I assure you, everyone but me was sitting at their own House tables, but that's not the bad part, it's just coming up—so anyway, all the Slytherins were there too (mean, nasty bunch they are), so naturally, there was this little idiot called Malfoy sitting there as well because he's part of that house (he's sooo part of them), and naturally, he saw. He saw the fat guy and I together at the Gryffindor table, arms linked. Then he yelled something, the most awful thing imaginable, here it is, "Oy! Longbottom! Finally got yourself a girlfriend, eh?" And the whole hall just burst into laughter, they found it funny, oh yes they did, and they found what this Longbottom fellow yelled back even more hilarious, "She's my friend!" And then he actually turned back to me and asked ever-so-innocently, "Tell him we're friends. We're friends, right?" Well, at that point, I had nearly gone into apoplexies and what _he _said made me go absolutely berserk.

What I did next astonished even myself. I got up, I yelled at the Longbottom fellow, "NO! We-are-not-friends-you-bloody-FOOL! WE-ARE-NOT-FRIENDS! Never were, never will be, do I make myself clear??!!" I was absolutely thundering and the whole hall heard me and they all clapped their hands to their mouths, totally mortified—what was _I _doing? It would have been bad enough if I had just stopped there but then I started on Malfoy, I whipped out my wand and headed towards him while calling him a dozen names I shan't repeat here. I just stepped over everyone who tried to stop me (actually, I think some of them let me—the rest were just too shocked to do anything). When I got right in front of him, I jabbed my wand straight into his throat and hexed him ten times with ten different spells, I even tried to transfigure him into a slug and it would have worked if he hadn't screamed and woken his two cronies out of their stupor. The minute he did that, the shaved apes were onto me and they would have killed me if Flitwick and McGonagal (teachers) hadn't stepped in to drag me out of the fight to get punished.

If you ask me, the punishment was worse. I couldn't do anything and I went into an absolute frenzy when any of the teachers started asking me questions—that's a bad thing to do when you want to prove your innocence. You see, the teachers (Groany Council, I call them) all started interrogating me at the same time, the questions were flung at me from all over the room and suddenly, I just screamed. I screamed and started yelling that I didn't know, needless to say, the lot of them all went quiet for awhile, then went whispering about amongst themselves. The next thing I remember is being here, this bright, white room—school infirmary, I found out later—where I was tucked tightly to the bed and bound there with a Binding Spell (Madam Pomfrey loosed me just now), I suppose they drugged me and then dragged me up here.

It's already coming to night, the Hogwarts Express has left and the house-elf who came by earlier told me that I'll be here until my father can come get me (I don't have a mother, I forgot to tell you just now—it's easy to forget). So here's where I end off for today, so long.

S. Sundarya

30th June 2004


	2. Chapter Two

* * *

Chapter Two

Dear Diary,

I'm sorry if my introduction to you was a little rushed—if not all out sloppy--, but you wouldn't be _too_ attentive to details if you had a grievance to spill (getting holed up in the school infirmary was _not _the end of the affair—but I'll fill you up on that after I patch up the holes in yesterday's introduction).

Never mind, it's too complicated—I left out details everywhere so I'll just start from the beginning. Right, I was born on the twentieth of October, year 1989 (which makes me fifteen this year), in a state hospital in Southern India. My family made a living through farming and we lived in the poorest part of the town because we barely owned any land or livestock. I continued living there until I was six--that was when my family migrated to Britain after receiving a letter from a relative who had moved here years before us (I'll quote part of the letter). It said that 'all the people are rich and fat from having so much to eat' and that 'all was joyous and prosperous' and that we would all be 'happy forever'.

Ha, famous last words! The minute we got there, we were absolutely appalled at the place that relative got us—it was a total dump, and we only manage to get that awful roof over our heads because the last occupant died of an illness and no one else wanted the place.

We had nothing, it was even worse than before we came because the airfare wiped out nearly all our savings and my dad took months to get a job as a factory worker (the pay was terrible). Worse still, that winter, we nearly froze in that squalid little room, the heating wasn't working and there were cracks in the walls and windows. One day, my mother just got fed up and headed out with all of us to the City Council to make a complaint. I still remember, she was holding me on her left and my baby brother cradled in her right arm when we crossed the road, it was raining that day—very foggy—and out of the blue, this car just came speeding along and ran my mother over.

She died instantly—Bang! And gone, dead—and the driver just went screeching off into the distance. I was just left bleeding from the head on the street with my brother who was wailing and covered in my mother's blood as well as his own. There was a crowd gathered round the scene just staring at my dead mum like it was something freakish out of the circus or something. It was only after half an hour that the ambulance arrived and by that time, the blood on the street was beginning to blacken and stink. The rest is all mired in a sea of confused dreams, dad told me I was unconscious for days and by the time I woke up, my mother's funeral was over and she had been cremated so I didn't even get to see her for the last time. From then on, it was only my dad, my brother and myself.

Life changed a lot when I was eleven. That was when I got my letter from Hogwarts, my dad was pretty mystified when he first saw the letter, but after reading it like for ten times to 'make sure it was real', he was happy in a sort-of way. He was like 'Wonderful! This is so portentous!' and he's been supportive ever since.

I guess I'll start on today's incidents now, since this morning, I've been doing filing and mailing of letters to all the fifth years to inform them about their O.W.L results. My back and tongue are sore (I licked the flaps of the envelopes instead of using the water the house-elf gave me). The only consolation from this punishment is that I now know everyone's O.W.L results and I am pleased to announce that the Malfoy fellow who got me into all this trouble failed more than half his subjects. _Somebody's father isn't going to be very happy._ Another thing that puts a smile on my face is that I came close to topping Transfiguration—third in the level—but for all the written subjects with the exception of Arithmancy—I got an A in that—I did pretty badly. And the top in the level would, of course, be Hermione Granger, that's for the fifth year in a row.

Another thing that happened today was that I received this terrible letter from my dad—he's demanding how I got myself into such a situation—and he says he can't pick me up just yet, so I'll have to wait. I wonder if his not being able to fetch me too soon has something to do with his being furious for all the trouble I've gotten myself into, but I wrote back to him anyway to tell him my O.W.L results, I hope he's happy.

That's all for today, I suppose.

S. Sundarya

1st July 2004

Dear Diary,

Sorry for not having written for so long, but that's because I was dreadfully exhausted. Yesterday and the day before that, I was forced to 'assist' old Filch with scrubbing the Great Hall till it shone. He was ever so sanctimonious, I tell you. It was awful, and that cat of his—Mrs Norris?—was tagging along behind me wherever I went like she was spying or something. Today, I had to clean out the girl's bathrooms and listen to old Myrtle-the-Pain relate her life story, she told it practically in real time, so you can guess just how boring and draggy it was. I've just finished up and am now sleeping in a camp bed in the Great Hall as all the dorms have been locked up for the holiday. It's strange, you know, sleeping here, out under the sky.

Another thing—dad has not arrived! I am in total despair because of that, I fear I've been left here to rot or otherwise be turned into a house-elf. Somebody GET-ME-OUT-OF-HERE!!!!!!!!

S. Sundarya

4th July 2004

Dear Diary,

Godhelpme Godhelpme Godhelpme Godhelpme Godhelpme Godhelpme Godhelpme Godhelpme

GOD HELP ME!!!!!!

Bad news: Dad still has not arrived. I think I'll go mad if they keep me here another day. Just today, I've been forced to tidy up the teacher's offices for the summer. My dust allergy acted up and my face is all RED and my nose is swollen and sore from sneezing. It is bedlam here. I feel awful, it's already three in the morning and I still can't sleep so I'm writing here and gazing up at the ceiling. It's all dark, just like the sky outside.

S. Sundarya

5th July 2004

Dear Diary,

My father just sent me a letter today. He says he'll be here by the 8th, he's been held up by work and he hasn't _really _abandoned me—in fact, he's really pleased with my results and says that my brother topped his third grade class and will be skipping two grades so that he'll be in sixth grade by the time he's ten. I'm so happy.

I've already exhausted all my House teacher's ideas for punishments so I'm free for the rest of my time here. Right now it's night-time and I'm sitting all alone in the lawn. The lake is this great, dark glimmering skin of darkness and the entire sky is an inky picture of serenity. I think I might just get to love this place.

S. Sundarya

6th July 2004


	3. Chapter Three

Chapter Three

Dear Diary,

I was really rushing into things when I said I might actually have a chance to like Hogwarts yesterday. McGonagal and the rest of Groany Council just had to ruin things for me. Today when my dad came, he was really quite cheerful (and that's not often) because he'd just been to my brother's prize-giving ceremony. He went on being happy until the teachers "spoke to him about my unruly, crude behaviour on my June 30th incident". As if being forced into six days of child labour and going from the 'weird, quiet foreign girl' to 'mad lunatic off a banana boat from a third-world country' weren't punishment enough! Now my only consolation is that the 30th will be a day to go down in school history thanks to me, because after the professors had given dad _their_ one-sided, exaggerated version of the story, even _he _was rather cross with me. He told me as we were on the way home from the station (we first went _there _from the school by Floo, using the sooty school kitchen fireplace—I'll bet they made it that way on purpose), and he was pretty mad all the way home—said something about my actions being "needlessly violent"—oh dear, and it's all that Longbottom fellow's fault. Ugh! Damn, why do all these people insist on making life difficult for me?

But anyway, by the time we got home, dad wasn't that miffed anymore (wouldn't have made a difference though, he went back to work soon after) and told me that he had been thinking about my "inefficiency in the English language" and then he

a) gave me a big hug and said it was all right.

b) gave me a big hug and said it was all right and even said he was proud of me for being an individual.

c) gave me a "Big Book of the Best English Poems—Commentary by &

Over-Qualified Professor".

Okay, give me the answer.

No.

No.

Nnnnn….YES!!! Finally you've got it, it's C!!!! (well, yeah, I made up the last bit about the guy's name.

My dad said to "ask Rabindranath for _assistance if you need help_", and then he was off. I was supposed to start on the thing pronto but I had to clean my room first. I nearly _died _then, after six days non-stop dusting and wiping and filing and cleaning at _school_, I had to clean my room too, of nine months dirt, all in a day. In the end the whole dust allergy thing got to me again—terrible, I sneezed so loudly that my brother said the whole flat shook (no, he's not very empathetic but I love him anyway). I think I will have to leave the room half cleaned and sleep in the living-room on the mouldy old couch instead.

S. Sundarya

8th July 2004

Dear Diary,

I didn't get a wink of sleep last night, I'd forgotten how bad that couch really is, the padding's collapsed and the springs underneath were all jangly and rusted and they kept pressing into my back. The musty, rough upholstery didn't help either and I spent the whole time lying awake with the springs pressing into my back, watching the street outside. I wonder what it's like out there at night.

Besides that, I didn't manage to convince dad to clean my room for me, he said he was too busy, so I ended up going down to the drugstore and buying surgical masks to keep the dust out of my nose (closest thing I could get to gas masks) and cleaning the darn place myself (dad said "Well, it's either you clean your room or sleep on the sofa for the whole summer." Arrgh."). Fat lot of help they were though, I'm still sneezing like anything, but I've gotten the cleaning done.

Now I've got another awful thing ahead of me though, I've got to read that book dad gave me (the guy sure knows how to ruin a holiday). Actually, I was trying to read it, until I got to the poem bit, the first one was Canterbury Tales, it was meant to be a funny poem but it's hard to find anything you don't understand funny. I tried asking my brother like dad told me, but he was reading one of those ultra-blobby-boring moral novels—Middlemarch—and they're even worse if such a thing can be possible, he said he couldn't help me and needed to "give this brilliant book full attention if I am to absorb all of it." Bloody blast, looks like I'm stuck now. I don't understand how Geoffrey Chaucer got through it although this great professor says it's wonderful, I'm not the type of person who just agrees on things without knowing them just because someone high and mighty says so. Arrgh, I wish dad weren't so gung-ho about such things, it's not doing me any good. Right now, I'm cursing so badly that I don't think I should write it down—oh, never mind, whatever $#()) (((& $ &&& &(&!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

S.Sundarya

9th July 2004

Dear Diary,

Nothing much happened today excepting the fact that I got an invite to a party, Hermione Granger's hosting. It's going to be a great big pool party extravaganza and then the usual boy-girl waltzing and cocktail-drinking social gig. She invited the whole school (she says), even the Slytherins, I expect she wants me to go on another rampage again. Fat chance, I'm not going, I'm _so _not going.

S. Sundarya

10th July 2004

Dear Diary,

I shall kick myself for my carelessness in disposing of trash forever and ever. I just chucked Hermione's fancy party invite into my book-end and dad found it, he's insisting I go, he says it's "only polite" and so there. He's also insisting we go shopping for dress robes since I didn't get any in Fourth Year, which resulted in my being banned from the Yule Ball (I was wearing homemade robes that were just an old school robe decked out with sequins and roses stuck on with a rather careless Sticking-On Charm), so we're going shopping tomorrow.

S. Sundarya

11th July 2004

Dear Diary,

We went to Diagon Alley to get those stupid robes today, _all _of us since dad said he "couldn't trust Rabindranath to stay at home alone and keep himself alive". So we had to stand in a wet bus-stop for two hours because the bus was late. The bus-stop was only four rods with a sheet of red spray-painted corrugated zinc balanced on it, so, needless to say, we all got wet. Dad swore, I swore, my brother swore (but I bet he only did it because dad and I did).

When we finally got to London after being tossed and rolled about in the bus (driven by this crazy guy whose eyeballs were popping out like he was reading Playboy or something), we got lost again because of this map I picked up at the tourist information stand that used only symbols so that it took three hours of hiking up and down town before we realized we were reading it upside down. It took a pretty long time before we finally found the wall that led to Diagon Alley.

My brother couldn't keep himself from peering at the goblins with an expression of extreme scientific interest and horrible fascination, he also kept asking questions and managed to infuriate the staff without meaning to. So it also took ages to get our money converted at the wizard bank—surly goblins make tardy bank-tellers.

After a long, long while, we finally got down to getting the robes. We went to Madam Malkin's, it was the only place I knew that didn't look too weird. Although with school robes she's alright enough, she's quite another thing when it comes to dress robes. When she saw me, she was immediately like "Ah! I know _just _what would look fabulous on you!" And then she went clattering off to the back of her shop, dug out this great big bolt of lilac silk and gold ribbons and then started measuring me. She made all sorts of remarks, here's the one that pleased me most: "My, you're very tall and thin dear, I think you'll look wonderful in your robes once I'm done with them." But then she asked me what they were for, and from that point on, things went completely downhill. Dad and Madam Malkin started talking about how "difficult it is to get teenagers to listen these days" and "how kids in the old days were much more mature and obedient". Even my brother rolled his eyes when I looked his way. As a result of their getting so wrapped up in their conversation, it was nearly eleven at night by the time we were finished.

When we got home, dad insisted on my wearing the robes and parading about to show them off, so it's one in the morning and I'm _just _getting off to bed.

S. Sundarya

12th July 2004

Dear Diary,

I didn't wake up until it was terribly late. Felt so stale that I didn't do anything but stay in my room and crack my brains on that poetry, I've gotten a little past the first three pages of the poem. I'm nervous about the party too, it's only two days away.

S. Sundarya

13th July 2004

Dear Diary,

I took out my swimsuit today to see what I looked like in it, it's this grey one-piece suit that I haven't worn in at least a year. When I tried it on , I found out two things, one bad, one good.

Good: It fits.

Bad: The colour's rather faded so I look very dead in it—greyer than I'm supposed to, and I've found a huge hole in the stomach area (I vaguely remember that last summer, the neighbour's kid came over to our place, hid in my closet and left holding a circle of grey material in her hand).

Fortunately, I managed to dig up another swimsuit, it's another old one—but intact—and it's a hot-pink one-piece with lacy black straps. I'd do something about it, just that I'm terrible at sewing and we're not allowed to use magic over the summer.

S. Sundarya

14th July 2004


End file.
